As I edit my historical fiction manuscript I am noticing that almost every male character smokes tobacco. It pops up quite a lot in the story. One person is blowing smoke rings, the other is stamping out his cigarette, someone else is filling his pipe, the other is puffing away at a Cuban cigar. They smoke as much as they drink. Which is actually true, if what I read in the diaries from the time period are accurate. One in particular, written by a surgeon from New York City dated 1895-98 Notes Collected in the Adirondacks (2010) includes multiple references to smoking or, as he liked to call it, "burning tobacco". Dr. Arpad Gerster, the author of the diaries, mentions his tobacco habit quite often and with no feelings of remorse or guilt. It is all pleasure for him. After a ten mile hike in the Adirondack woods he sits down and lights up.

Our attitudes about smoking have changed quite dramatically over the past century, even over the last thirty years. My students are always amazed when I talk about my own professors who smoked during class when I attended college in New York state back in the 1980s. I had one in particular that I remember fondly, she was my political science professor and she smoked Virgina Slims. I counted once in class, she smoked five during the lecture.

She would light one up and take a deep drag from it in the middle lecturing. She would then proceed to talk without exhaling. Tiny wisps of smoke would escape from her mouth and I was mesmerized. A long piece of ash would dangle precariously at the end of the cig and we'd all wait with bated breath to see if it would fall off before she had a chance to flick it into an ashtray that sat on her podium. Needless to say, I did fairly well in that class, and enjoyed it very much. I may not be able to recite the Federalist Papers but I damn well know what they're about. I credit her panache and ability to captivate her audience for that as much as her lectures. Smoking was all part of the package.

While staying at Camp Kirby on Raquette Lake this past week I was invited to attend an author signing and book selling event at Hoss's Country Store. It was a wonderful event, there were many other authors there who also write about settings in the Adirondacks and I was able to converse with quite a few of them. While there, I picked up a book called Notes Collected in the Adirondacks 1895-1896. It is a transcription of the diaries kept by Dr. Arpad Gerster who had a summer home on Big Island on Raquette Lake. He was also close friends with the subject of my trilogy: William West Durant, and he appears as a character in my second novel in the trilogy, so of course, I had to read more about this man.

And he was quite a character. He was a reader of the classics, a renowned surgeon at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City, a father, husband, and avid sportsman. His relationship with William was close-knit. They liked to hunt and fish together and shared a hunting cabin on Sumner Lake. William is mentioned in the dairy as Mr. Durant. From the few passages I read, it was apparent that Arpad stuck by William while he was going through his divorce with Janet and while Ella, William's sister, was taking him to court. Arpad laments that others at Raquette Lake had forgotten how generous William had always been and were taking sides against him. This bothered Arpad.

Most of the book however is filled with poetic descriptions of his place on Raquette Lake, his trips fishing and hunting, and the flora and fauna of the area. It was a delight to read; so much so that I spent one evening on a dock while the sun was setting trying to finish it before the light gave out on me. I was thoroughly engrossed. On the way home, I picked up the second collection of his diaries in Old Forge Hardware. I highly recommend the book if you like to read about life in the late 1800s in the Adirondacks.